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Steve Wesselingh

Professor

SA Node - Wesselingh

The Wesselingh group are interested in Neurovirology, HIV and vaccine development. Professor Steve Wesselingh has consistently worked towards the integration of high quality medical research with health-care delivery, leading to improved health outcomes for Australia and the poorly resourced countries of the region.

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Professor Wesselingh initially trained as an Infectious Diseases Physician and then completed a PhD titled “Response of Astrocytes to Viral Infections”. In 1991 he was awarded a NHMRC Neil Hamilton Fairley Fellowship to continue the study of the neuroimmunology of HIV at the Neurovirology Unit in the Department of Neurology, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore.

In 1993 he was appointed to the faculty of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine as Assistant Professor. Professor Wesselingh returned to Australia in 1994 to set up the Neurovirology Research Unit within the Department of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, Flinders University, continuing a close collaboration with Neurology Department at Johns Hopkins. In January 1999 he was appointed Professor and Director of the Infectious Diseases Unit, the Alfred Hospital. This Unit incorporated the Victorian State-wide HIV/AIDS service and the Victorian HIV palliative care unit.

In 2002 he was appointed Director of the Burnet Institute and oversaw the merger of the Burnet Institute and Austin Research Institute and a doubling of its research capacity and major growth of its impact on global health. In September 2007 he was appointed Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences at Monash University and oversaw a significant increase in the faculty’s NHMRC funding and also a strengthening of the faculty’s relationship with its teaching hospitals culminating in the development of a formal Academic Health Science Centre. In October 2011 he commenced as the inaugural Executive Director of the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute.

Since 1988 he has had ongoing NHMRC support including multiple NHMRC project grants, a program grant and has been a CI on 3 large NIH grants, one on HIV neurological disease and 2 on microbiocide development.

Professor Steve Wesselingh is SAHMRI’s inaugural Executive Director. Previously he was Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences at Monash University, one of Australia’s leading health Faculties. Prior to taking up the Deanship, he was Director of the Burnet Institute, an independent medical research institute that specialises in infectious diseases, immunology and public health.

His undergraduate and doctoral training was at Flinders University and Medical Centre and his post-doctoral training was completed at Johns Hopkins Medicine in the United States.

Professor Wesselingh has over 160 peer reviewed publications, he has 7 publications with citations over 300, 13 publications with citations between 100 and 300, 25 with citations with citations between 50 and 100, total citations of over 8453 and a career H-index of 46.